


Fractures

by BoWritesShit



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Graphic Imagery, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 01:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19163179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoWritesShit/pseuds/BoWritesShit
Summary: There was a spot on the ceiling that occupied his late nights and early mornings.





	Fractures

He dreamt that night that his skin was pulling apart, sloughing off like yellowed sheets of wall paper.

Sloughing. It wasn't a word he'd heard in context before, but now that he had, he couldn't seem to shake it, courtesy of a chemist whose vocabulary he was doomed to absorb day after day, just another element in Pripyat that would give him long-term side effects. 

Boris laid sweating in bed and watching a spot on the ceiling he watched every single night and every single morning and he wondered if he would think about it when he was home again.

Home seemed like a strange concept anymore, somehow. He supposed it was because the word had always evoked some vague feeling of safety - in spite of his training, which told him there was no such thing - but now it only made him think of rooms, walls, a place where his books were. 

The night before, he dreamt that he was fragmenting, cracking like an egg, fracture lines running through him like veins in marble, his face composed of a mosaic of fissures and even the slightest pressure would have him fall to pieces, slivers of himself falling away to reveal a smoking black pit inside of him.

He wondered what else Chernobyl would take away - a portion of his life, certainly, and the capacity for a decent night's sleep, but what else? 

He wouldn't feel sorry for himself, or at least mostly he wouldn't, maybe only privately for a few minutes, before the utilitarian aspects of his personality climbed out from under the haze of his sleep. He had gotten off easy compared to the ones who had gotten close, he had the gift of time, even if he couldn't know exactly how much - his understanding was that ionizing radiation could be fickle. He might have five years. Maybe more. 

Maybe less.

He would just need to make it count and laying in bed staring at a water spot would not go towards that cause.

He smiled grimly to himself: utilitarian.

His fist ached when he closed it on the door handle on his way out and it took a moment for him to remember the hole he had put into a wall the previous day in a fit of frustration. His temper had been something he'd gotten a handle on back in his thirties, one day having made the decision to regard it as a reserve to be used sparingly. Compartmentalizing hadn't been a problem for more than three decades but there had been instances since his arrival where the anger had come in white-hot and he felt uncomfortably young in those moments.

He had turned afterwards and Legasov had looked young, sitting with his elbows on his knees, his hands in prayer position, eyes wide behind his glasses and fixated on the drywall dust on his knuckles, frozen bewilderment. It had almost made him laugh. Almost.

He felt old that morning, stopping at the end of the hallway to look out the window at a Pripyat, the sun not yet having risen, and it was so quiet and still that Boris felt as though he needed to raise his voice just to be certain sound still existed. 

He wasn't making much sense, something was sitting in his chest and it was heavy and mean, so he ran his thumb over his knuckles to engage with his own aches and he thought about scraps falling away again while he trekked through the building.

Upon first glance, the dining room was empty. It made efforts to be an elevated space, but managed only to be a little ludicrous with its high ceiling and pink walls and white trim, fits of too bright light in the places where it wasn't frustratingly dim. A long table sat with a spread of breakfast, steaming and undisturbed, save for a single spot where a cup and saucer were absent.

It explained the itch at the back of his neck.

He turned and found Legasov tucked awkwardly against a far wall as though he had attempted to make himself as unobtrusive as possible in a completely empty room, poised with a spoon hovering beside an unbroken boiled egg, his eyes fixed on him, his body frozen in place as though waiting for permission to operate again; Legasov moved through the world as though apologizing for his very existence.

"Good morning." Boris said, more dryly than he meant to, staring back until Valery's skittishness couldn't allow for it any longer.

"Yes." Valery said, as though it were a statement to agree upon, though they both knew there would be little that was good about it. He drank his coffee to get around the fact he didn't know what else to say, managing to spill some onto the table in the process: someone needed a cigarette. 

When Boris sat down beside him instead of across, Legasov went through a process of observing the empty seat across from him, Boris beside him, the empty seat again, and back to Boris, managing to pantomime his own thoughts on the matter, puzzled that they should be so near. Boris didn't move and he made sure his elbow nudged into the chemist's, encroaching on the pocket of space he had made for himself.

It wasn't that he wanted to instigate.

It was only that he felt Legasov needed someone to lead by example. 

He felt the other man's eyes wandering and found them on his hand, seeking evidence of the previous day's rage. He flexed his fingers and Valery knew he had been caught, so he picked up his spoon again, letting it hover, visibly working his way over topics before he settled on one that made sense for the moment.

"How did you sleep?" he asked finally.

"Fine." Boris lied, and flinched when he cracked the shell.


End file.
